As I approach the end of Winter and the transition into Spring, I am finding it a little easier to get back on track.
Health & Fitness: So I lost a few pounds, which is great. I’m still up a few from my lowest, which is also fine, and expected, but you know… I can admit that I’m a little bit salty. Just a quick recap – at the end of last year, I got down to abut 239 lbs. Over January and the beginning of February, I got up to 246. I expected some weight gain, but I was not happy about that 7 pounds. On the other hand, I think it helps me reset expectations for next year – prepare for a winter season where I could gain 5-10, and that’ll be fine. Anyway, I’m back down to 243, which I feel a lot better about. I do think that some of this is a medication issue, since I had a switch in some meds and an unscheduled break for a few days from some others. Not my favorite, but that’s the US medical system for you.
Academics: Algebra continues to move forward. I’m feeling more and more comfortable with it, and I think I’m now better at it than I ever was. However, that’s not really a huge comfort for me, but rather a confirmation that I didn’t really understand it when I was young. Though I’ll say, I feel significantly stronger when it comes to fractions, quadratics, exponents, and complex numbers. But I’m not effortless with them yet, and I think I need to be. Related, there are still a few spots where I’m not just inefficient, I’m genuinely struggling. Applications are the big key, because that’s not just the math, that’s the intuition and understanding, and those are going to be what matters in other classes and the real world, especially if I do keep leaning Engineering. For my computer science jazz, I finished my final project… then I looked at some other ones and felt mine is inadequate and decided I needed to upgrade this thing. It’s not that mine was significantly under the expectations, in fact I believe it met them. But I can do better and, more importantly, I’m pretty sure there are some features and functionality that graders are looking for, and some of those are pretty obvious for my project. I also think I could have wrapped those upgrades in like, two pretty dedicated days. But instead I’ve only really dedicated one day, and keep chipping at the rest of the stuff in these smaller sessions, which end up adding time because I need to reset and fix up little mistakes I’ve made in previous sessions. Very annoying. And that also leads me to today’s topic.
On my mind this week: Aaronproofing was a concept I had years ago, the idea of recognizing some of my little shortfalls and setting up guardrails that kept me from stepping on the same rake over and over. Sometimes you just gotta recognize a thing you do as a trend, and then address it. Maybe. But if you want to You-proof a thing, you gotta G.I. Joe that shit first, because knowing is half the battle. So a trend I’ve noticed in myself that I don’t love is how I’ve come to treat my Mondays. And it sucks.
In my last month, I started to reorient my life around the job, but in a way that really started to work for me. Like, I got real good at that shit, and part of it was setting each entire week up on Monday. I’d come into work on Monday, ready to rock and with a full head of steam, and then I’d use that motivation to set up all of my work projects, make all of my appointments, just get everything that I needed done or ready to be done right then. It made the whole rest of the week so much easier, and I’d just get shit done like I never had before, and frankly, haven’t since.
And I’m not doing that these days. I find myself waking up late, listing around, and dragging my feet on basically everything. This has been particularly acute the last few weeks, compounded by my ongoing seasonal difficulties, which I think is why I’m noticing it so readily. But some level of this has actually been happening for the better part of a year at this point. I did get a bit more done this Monday than the last couple of weeks, which I suspect is also a part of the seasonal shift, but the problem still exists. Anyway, I’ve recognized it, so hopefully I can now do something about it.
The getting up on time has been the toughest, and that started following my hospital stay a few years back. It’s possible that this just has to be the new me, because it’s true that I just don’t recover like I used to. That’s also an age thing, but I know plenty of old folks that get up at the crack of with little to no issue. The thought I’ve been having today, which I have to imagine is going to prove rather naive, is that I just need to start doing it. That’s it. Set the alarm at the hour I want, and get the fuck up when it goes off. Doesn’t matter if I slept poorly or still feel tired or can sleep in. I’m circling a thought here, and I don’t feel like editing, so I’m just going to write what I’m thinking and that’ll be that. So much of what I’ve succeeded at came from the notion of just doing it. To do it – you do it. That’s it. And I feel like this is one of those. Like, it seems like I really did need the rest, and whether or not I do still, rhythms are rhythms, and mine needs resetting. Some resets are best in measured, careful phases. But I think this one is more like a bandage or cold pool – just do it. I think if I can, and then keep it up for a week or so, I’ll reset my rhythms and it won’t be so hard to get up any more.
Well that’s the idea, anyway. I’m not entirely committed, which really is the enemy of success. So we’ll see, and I’ll report back if I can remember. In the meantime, keep it easy.